Cupcakes for Clara

invitation central :: part three

I've finished my boy tea party invitations... yippee! 

The felt stitchery is about 9" x 12" and stretched over a deep canvas frame. The lovely client little Mr Z and his mummy Mrs K are very pleased with the picture. 

The prints turned out nicely I think, and the felt number ones just finish them off nicely.

It seems as though I have been doing lots of teeny stitching lately. So much so that I have ended up with a very sore finger where the needle has been digging in, but I can't seem to use a thimble. Does anyone else have this problem? Any magical non-thimble like thimbles that protect your fingers without getting in the way?

a boy tea party

Working on a stitched felt illustration for an invitation commission. The client in question is an almost one year old little boy (well his mum actually!) who is having a boy tea party for his birthday. 

The idea for the invitations is to create a piece of fabric artwork that can be kept and hung on the wall maybe, then make prints of it for the actual invites. Then each card will have a little felt number one glued down over the printed number one. 

I'm really pleased with it so far - teacups, cupcakes, stripes - what more do you need?

teddy bear

This little bear turns one next week. Can you believe it? I certainly can't. 

We wanted to do a small something to celebrate, so we're having a teddy bear's picnic birthday party. And what do you need for a birthday party? Why, invitations of course!! 

They were ever so simple to make, and if you're interested I could make a downloadable template. 

Another little lady is in the celebrating spirit at the moment - her christening was this weekend. I wanted to make her a keeping gift that had a feeling of the invitations. 

 

It's a door hanger for her bedroom. Look carefully at the door handle that it is hanging from - actually the lack of door handle. That's our living room door. The handle fell off about a year ago and we can't get it to stay back on. We still use it to open the door, it's just that now it lives on the stairs or, more recently, the dining table! 

Let's hope Eliana has more luck with her door handle!

invitation central :: part two

The second commission covering our dining table recently was a set of pop-up invitations featuring Kenilworth Castle. These are a much improved version of our own wedding invites. I think that you just learn to do things better along the way, and mistakes that are fine for your own invites just don't cut it when someone is paying!

There were thirty of these ones to hand cut and arrange - ensuring that the pop popped on every one.

Packaged with RSVP cards, envelopes, labels, and stickers.

This is how the card looks pre-pop. And the whole bundle was wrapped up in tissue and placed carefully within the keepsake box I made. 

I had a lot of fun making the box. Freehand embroidery on my sewing machine without any kind of clue about what to do. Who knew that you could get special 'feet' or attachments or needles just for this exact job? Not me that's for sure. This was something I discovered after the struggle!

invitation central :: part one

I have recently been a busy little bee working on two different invitation commissions. The first one was for 45 handmade, embroidered flowery photo cards for a lovely little sweetheart's christening invitations. 

It was a tricky process to begin with: broken machine needles; chewed up cards; cotton breaking; the printer leaking black ink; and watercolour's dripping everywhere! Having said that, it was quite refreshing to freehand embroider on my machine - something I've not really had much experience with. 

Each card had a little bit of everything - I stitched the flowers, painted watercolour's over the top, cut-out frames and placed a photo of Eliana behind, lined the insides, and placed them inside a lined envelope. 

And of course this type of process meant that no two cards were the same. The process went something like this...

And the finished article looked something like this...

Our dining table was covered with these for days whilst I finished them inbetween miss Matilda's sleeps, which are not quite as long as they could be for working through! And of course once the invites were finished, you know me I had to package them up in a special way. So I made a box. Well, I didn't make the actual box. But I did cover the top of a box and machine embroidered Eli's name onto it so that it may be a keepsake box for when the invitations have been all unpacked. 

And I made little tags to complete the package - to label what each stack of things was - just in case you couldn't tell!!

Thankfully Eli's mummy loved them and has sent them out the their respective invitee's already. Who I hope will like them too.